The Man With the Red Tattoo

The Man with the Red Tattoo is Raymond Benson’s 2002 final original James Bond novel, his sixth and last in the continuation series, and a deliberate return to the Japan of Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice. Bond is sent to investigate the death of Mayumi McMahon, daughter of a Japanese-Irish industrialist with ties to British intelligence; the trail leads to a splinter Yakuza faction with a bioterror weapon timed to coincide with a G8 summit in Hokkaido.

Benson does his best original-Bond work here. The Tokyo sections feel genuinely lived-in (the cherry-blossom timing, the Roppongi nightlife, the Tsukiji fish market scene, the bullet train logistics), and Bond’s interior voice is closer to the Fleming register than in any of Benson’s earlier original novels. The Yakuza tradecraft is decent rather than great; the bioterror plot is workmanlike. The romance with Reiko Tamura is one of Benson’s better-written Bond-girl arcs, which is saying something. As a sendoff to the continuation series, it earns its closing chapter.

Recommended for Bond completists, fans of You Only Live Twice and any reader hunting for books like The Man with the Red Tattoo in the Fleming-Japan vein. Four stars, and the best of Benson’s original Bond novels.